


freshman flowerbud

by sodas



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 09:05:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7928905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodas/pseuds/sodas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes a while to get into the swing of things, but Shinji's learning many things from Kaworu, a little patience included.  AU <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIiX2FJbgD8">(???)</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	freshman flowerbud

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nyxartemis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyxartemis/gifts).



> a companion (prequel) to [house, warming](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7657507) for someone very kind, who wanted to see a start to this relationship.  
> the setting here resembles the high school minimally detailed at the end of sadamoto's manga, i.e. a school in the city with dormitory housing. this is not, however, karlshin. that will come another day.

When the boy from two rows over sits next to Shinji at lunch, Shinji tries not to choke, and stares staunchly down at his food. He isn't staunch about many things, but he'll put in the effort here. "I hope you don't mind," the boys says. His skin is white and dry like paper, but that's not a surprise—Shinji has looked at him every day since noticing him near the start of the school year. What's new is this: blue-green veins curving along the inside of the boy's wrists, creating a delta here, a wider waterway elsewhere. Shinji has never been this close to the boy, who offers no apology for his presence despite Shinji's bad expression. No excuses, either. Instead: "Oh, your lunch looks good." 

_You didn't even let me answer,_ Shinji thinks, frowning down at his lunch box. _What if I did mind?_ His shoulders rise; he's trying to physically restrain himself from sulking. Mostly he's irritated because he doesn't mind at all, and he's scared of seeming desperate. "It's mainly vegetables," he mumbles, deflecting, and this is demonstrable: he lifts a cherry tomato with his chopsticks. "A little egg, and..."

"Vegetables are nice, though, aren't they?"

"Sure..." Is this the kind of stuff this guy says to his usual party at lunch? Not that there's much of a "usual" party, really—it seems like there are different classmates pulling their desks up to his every day. Shinji knows this because he sneaks glances while he's eating. He does that now, lifting his eyes with the greatest discretion he's able. He sees the boy pulling a store-bought lunch out of his plastic bag. _Like Touji,_ Shinji thinks faintly, surprised by this. It gives him enough confidence to try some actual conversation. "Some days I put more meat in it... Usually chicken—" 

His mouth snaps shut. He'd been about to say, _But I really like hamburger._ But it seems, somehow, too personal, a pearl held fast by an oyster; he's scared of being coaxed open, regardless of how gentle a fisherman's hands might be. He would end up making an idiot of himself if he shared his likes, his dislikes, his personality. Nobody wants to see that mess. To try and save face, he jams the cherry tomato into his mouth. 

"That's amazing, Ikari-kun!" says his lunchtime guest. Shinji clamps down on the tomato abruptly, biting his tongue in the process. He tries very hard not to squeeze his eyes shut and look like a total weirdo as the boy asks, "Is it you who does the cooking?" Still chewing, and wincing, Shinji nods slowly. "Amazing," the boy says again. 

Shinji swallows, and then says the stupidest thing he could. "You know my name?" His face is hot and prickling; there's no way he isn't blushing, whether from embarrassment, or...

"Oh," the boy says, mouth rounding into a rising sun, a dawning—he _is_ the dawn, a burgeoning bloom of sunlight and warmth cast directly onto Shinji's face. Shinji has to keep from squinting in the face of it. "We haven't been introduced. And here I am, sitting down just like that. I'm—"

That thing, before, the stupidest thing, that was a lie. _This_ is the stupidest— "I know who you are." Shinji's fingers feel liable to let the chopsticks slip away at any moment. He has the bright, sharp feeling that he will die if that happens. "You're Nagisa... Nagisa-kun." Nagisa Kaworu smiles like warm honeyed milk, and Shinji knows it's all over. There's no way Shinji can act normally when he's confronted by the perfect harmony of those features.

"I'm surprised you know who I am!" Kaworu's leaning back in his borrowed seat, seemingly rebounding from a wave of joy. His smiling face is tilted up as if he's found a sunbeam. Is he mocking or modest? Loads of people are in love with Nagisa Kaworu, mostly girls who cluster around him, frantic moths at the brightest light, drunken butterflies at the richest garden. Probably everyone in this year knows who he is. 

"You're kind of hard to miss," Shinji unfortunately decides to say. It's made worse by the frown he can't help. He immediately shuts his eyes, mortified by his own lack of tact. It's true that Kaworu has many admirers, but his detractors make fun of him for being so pale and for looking like a foreigner. Shinji wonders if he can salvage this, but he rarely tends toward hope. 

But when he risks a peek through his shriveled nerves, he sees that Kaworu is still smiling. "So are you," Kaworu says, "in my opinion." It sounds so much kinder than anything Shinji has said in his entire life, but Shinji wonders what on Earth it means. His mouth opens uselessly, casting a wide net in an empty sea, but it's Kaworu who continues to speak. "I've wanted to come and say hello for a while, now, but your friends are always with you during lunch."

Shinji lets out a breath, slow and steady as he can manage. It feels like his soul leaving his body. _There's no way,_ he thinks, _that he wanted to come talk to me._ "Oh..." It comes out dazed. "Kensuke and Touji. Yeah... Kensuke's on this trip with his father, it's for some military thing. And Touji wasn't feeling very well yesterday, so I guess he stayed home sick. So I figured I'd be eating alone today, if not for... you..." Was that too direct? Did it sound weird? He toys with a slice of cucumber, hoping with adolescent insanity that Kaworu can't read his mind. "Anyway, Kensuke comes back to school tomorrow. So it's really just today that things are like this." Damn it. Shinji's friends are great, and he loves them more than the social climate of a high school will let him admit, but in this moment he wants to curse them for delaying this meeting. 

"It seems like fortunes were with me today." Kaworu is fresh as a breeze, a callback to the springtime that's currently winding down. "I'm happy, at least, that I have this day to talk with you."

The blush, the prickle, now it's such that Shinji feels faint and dizzy. His heart stops, then starts, a candle's flame amidst air currents; it's stuttering inside his chest, hormonal and inelegant. He might drown in his embarrassment—but if he doesn't throw himself into these waters, he will surely drown elsewhere, in regret. He takes the chance. "You probably don't want to —" _Self-deprecating idiot. Nobody likes that. No wonder people barely talk to you._ Shinji can feel himself sweating, damp hands, shirt sticking to his back. "But if you did want to— Just saying— Well... You could sit here again. With all of us, next time." 

Shinji has been denying for years that another boy could look so pristine. He's been telling himself that only girls make his guts somersault this way. But the look on Kaworu's face is eradicating any of those hopes. Kaworu says, "I do want to." He says, like powdered sugar, "I'd really like that." 

— 

Touji and Kensuke do accept Kaworu—at least, when they tease him, it's not unkindly. Kensuke asks Kaworu if he'll let them sell amateur photographs of him to the rest of the school. Touji throws his arm around Kaworu's shoulders and pesters him: "You gotta spill your secret to success with the ladies!" (Shinji rushes to change the subject, each time.) But Kaworu never spends the afternoon with this group of stooges after school, and Shinji wonders if his friendship with Kaworu has stalled here. It's recycled air in a closed off room—stuffy, but Shinji keeps inhaling deeply. It's sodapop gone flat—too sweet for Shinji's tastes, but he wants another mouthful. This is unlike him, and it's totally crazy, but Shinji doesn't want the status quo. For once, he has aspirations. And, at least a little, he has a plan. 

The minute class ends, he tells Kensuke and Touji he's got other things to do today. He feels slightly guilty for not telling the whole truth, but he doesn't want to hear their teasing, and it's outweighed by a fluttering thrill besides. Though as much as he's determined to try, it's scary. It's scary, not knowing what Kaworu will say...

Shinji tells himself at first that he has the fortitude to wait for the kids around Kaworu's desk to trickle away. But as he stands beyond their boundaries, the tightness of his throat gives him second thoughts. It's not too late, he thinks, to catch up with Touji and Kensuke. Or he could just retreat into his room, lie in bed, and call himself an idiot... But the sea parts. The clouds part. The sun shines from on high, into Shinji's eyes. He has heard something vague from fringe missionaries about the Trumpet of God, and this must be it:

Kaworu spies him in between the other students. 

"Excuse me," he says gently. He speaks so kindly to the group that Shinji wants to be one of them. Kaworu rises from his seat, scooping up his satchel, and navigates his peers with grace. He says again, "Excuse me," and he sounds just as nice as before. Now, though, Shinji can't wish to be anyone else in the world. Kaworu has left the other students for him. Kaworu has left them all for _him_. For maybe the first time ever, Ikari Shinji is exactly the right person to be. He can barely process what Kaworu asks him: "What's up, Ikari-kun?"

But it's dangerous to let the daze last forever. "Uh," Shinji starts, and tries to fill himself with electricity, Frankenstein's amalgamation of addled nerves. He's giddy. "Kensuke and Touji went to play games at Touji's place." Touji is the only one out of all four boys who doesn't live in the high school dorms. His actual room in his actual house is a sort of after school haven. 

"Oh? Are you going to meet them there?"

The look on Kaworu's face is nearly paralytic for Shinji. Kaworu's expression is a lace curtain over his fine features, delicate, maybe even... flimsy... Shinji wishes for a veil of his own. "Oh, no," he says. More than one person has told him to try a method they all call "fake it till you make it," but Shinji is certain it's easy to see the trainwreck happening inside his heart. Regardless, he at least tries to sound composed. "Actually, I'm going grocery shopping. So, I couldn't hang out with them today. But..."

There it is, the lace in Kaworu's face. Shinji belatedly recognizes it for what it is: hope. "Yes?" Kaworu asks. 

" _But_..." The lace is hope. Shinji can do this. "I was wondering, um, I was just curious, about when you usually go shopping, Nagisa-kun."

Kaworu's features are dappled with something exhilarating that Shinji is afraid to name. "Come to think of it, it's about time for me to pick up a few things."

They both hold their breaths for a moment. 

"Would you mind if I came with you?" Kaworu asks. 

— 

It takes a while to get into the swing of things, but Shinji's learning many things from Kaworu, a little patience included. Eventually they're shopping together every week. This afternoon marks their fourth week in a row, and things have only been getting better. Shinji had quickly found that Kaworu lived mostly off of instant food—this explained the store-bought lunches—and had fussed about this to an embarrassing degree. Kaworu finally pacified him by asking, "Could you help me make a shopping list?" Shinji didn't think he'd ever be able to help Kaworu with anything at all. Now Thursday afternoons are spent looking through Kaworu's kitchenette, browsing to see what he needs, while Fridays are for shopping. 

This Friday has gone that same way, although it's raining today, and Shinji had been sent fussing again following the reveal that Kaworu doesn't typically use umbrellas. "Nagisa-kun," he scolds now, sourly hefting his shopping bags with one hand, "I thought you were more pragmatic than that." Kaworu laughs. "I'm serious!" gripes Shinji. He huffs a bit, and it's steamy in the humid air. "Get underneath my umbrella, it's no good if you go home soaked." 

"That's very kind of you," Kaworu says. It's mild, pleasant, like everything he says, but there's something bubbling beneath. 

Shinji fumbles with his bags. That particular quality of Kaworu's voice is getting less and less mysterious, and Shinji thinks more and more about confronting it. Too terrifying, perhaps. He wants very much to look at Kaworu's face, but is trying his best not to. It's because of this he doesn't notice right away that Kaworu isn't completely underneath the umbrella. When he does notice, he scowls. "Get under here!" he insists.

"But, Ikari-kun, the umbrella..." 

Finally Shinji glances up. Kaworu's hair is damp, fluffing out a little awkwardly, and there are beads of water near his jaw. His blazer is discolored from the moisture. Out of the rainfall peeks a secret thought: _Beautiful._ This isn't the first time that word has come to Shinji's mind in reference to Nagisa Kaworu, but it _is_ the first time he doesn't suppress it immediately. He lets it hang there. _Beautiful._ He savors it, turning it over inside himself, turning it over against his tongue, inside his mouth sewn shut. And he knows at last that he can't blame his flush on the humidity.

Kaworu lets him stare dumbly for a moment before nudging with his gentle voice. "Ikari-kun, I have an idea. Tell me what you think. You can hold the umbrella, and I'll carry the shopping. That way we can help each other." 

"Okay," Shinji says faintly. He almost feels separate from his body while he watches Kaworu take his shopping bags out of his hand. But this really must be him, and there's skin-to-skin proof: their fingers slide against each other, rainwater-slick. It only lasts for a second, but it brings Shinji to certainty that he wants more of it. He doesn't know what to say, though. 

Kaworu, though, always knows what to say. He always knows when to speak, and what words and tone of voice to use. Even now, he can console Shinji's silence. "Thank you," he says, "for doing all this for me." 

That, at least, Shinji can answer. "It's nothing..." He eyes the toes of his shoes. "I mean, we're friends." 

"And I'm really glad for that," says Kaworu. It sounds like the truest thing ever, and there's that bubbling thing again, at the back of Kaworu's voice. "You know, I was really nervous, the first day I came and talked to you." 

As far as Shinji can tell, Kaworu has never lied to him about anything, but there's skepticism and self-consciousness equally, in his face, when he looks back up at Kaworu. "Nervous? Oh, you weren't really." 

"No, I was. My mouth was so dry, every word felt like cotton. I couldn't keep track of what I was saying. I was sure you would think I was too strange to talk with."

Shinji laughs, and inwardly berates himself for laughing. His laughter is directly wholly toward himself— _You should be laughing at me, too_ —but he doesn't want it to sound like it's at Kaworu's expense. Through his embarrassed cringe, he says, "Of all the things to be nervous about. It's just me." 

"Yes," Kaworu says, "it's you." His footfalls cease with a wet murmur, and Shinji's own steps stutter. He backs up to hold the umbrella over Kaworu again. Kaworu looks dewy. "It's you, Ikari-kun. Of course I'd be nervous. You are... Truly, you're so—"

"Nagisa-kun," Shinji blurts, a little loud. The umbrella rattles in his awkward hand. "I, uh... You see, I..." _Am such an idiot,_ he thinks, shoulders sinking. His nerves are an abandoned bowl of ice cream. It's scary, whatever Kaworu was going to say; but Shinji wants to know anyway; but first, he wants to say something himself. Isn't that selfish. Look, Shinji's not entirely stupid. He understands, at last, the look on Kaworu's face. But if they're going to admit these things, Shinji wants to do it first. For once in his life, for once in their friendship, he doesn't want to be lamentable or leeching. He wants to be reliable. He tries again: "You see, I've been thinking."

"What have you been thinking about?" Kaworu asks. He's smiling patiently, a flower waiting for a watering can, despite being interrupted. 

"About you." _Lame._ "Um, I guess, the both of us." _Scary._ Shinji swallows, his mouth and throat of wasteland quality. He completely understands that cottony feeling Kaworu spoke of moments ago. "Nagisa-kun, you're my best friend. I mean... you're the most amazing friend I have." _Get to the point,_ he tells himself, swimming through nausea and total elation. " _I mean_..." He exhales. Kaworu's face looks like a hot spring, shifting waters, boundless natural warmth. "You're a completely... different type of friend," Shinji says quietly. "Or... that's how I see you. My best friend, but differently from a friend. That's—" This is it, right? A confession? It feels like a lancing of his heart, a medical procedure with zero anesthetic. "That's how I feel." 

For his part, Kaworu is frank and stark like contrasting colors. Holding grocery bags full of Shinji's efforts, Kaworu says, "Ikari-kun, I love you."

A relationship, Shinji supposes, is when two people meet in the middle.


End file.
